1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method for loosely coupling applications serving the many screens of an end user's experience, including what at present are the three primary screens of television, mobile devices and PCs. The method couples such applications via an event database which captures events about an end user's context, sent from those applications, in an event database, which may then be searched by advertising or other applications to acquire information about usage and customer context and tailor application behavior, including advertising, to a specific end user.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
A significant number of individuals currently possess many devices through which they experience application functionality including advertising. These devices include, for example television, PCs, and mobile devices. Much of the advertising encountered by end users of these devices is Product specific, not necessarily end user specific. Furthermore, many advertising methods currently employed by these devices are ineffective because they cannot adequately target the end user audience.
Applications that understand the current context of the end user can deliver better functionality to those end users. Increasingly, end users interact with multiple applications via different screens simultaneously (e.g., they do Internet searches while watching television and take phone calls as they occur). To deliver functionality effectively, applications need to understand how other applications are affecting the end user context. It is very difficult and complex to establish direct linkages between applications for the purposes of context sharing. A better, more loosely coupled mechanism is needed to exchange such context information.
Developers around the world are creating Internet applications at an unprecedented rate (thousands of applications per month). For the mass market, these applications are largely free to end users. Advertising provides most of the support for the mass market Internet applications ecosystem. The ability to place ads is based on an understanding of the end user. Applications learn information about their end-users as they deliver their functionality (e.g., a Restaurant Finder application learns their food preferences). Collectively, the end-user information gathered by applications is of great value to advertisers and can be monetized through an advertising value chain, but it is not always possible or desirable to advertise to an end user in association with the application that gathered data about that end user or at the time that information was collected. (For example, it might not be desirable to advertise to an end user who is using a Restaurant Finder application on a mobile device because of the device's small screen. Furthermore, it might be desirable to place an ad to that end user for a particular type of restaurant at a later time, when the end user is watching TV, based on the information the mobile Restaurant Finder application gathered).